Manaflask Interview with Method
Manaflask had the opportunity to speak with members of Method about their thoughts on the first Mists of Pandaria raid. They all seemed pleased with the quality of Mogu'shan Vaults and not so happy with Galleon's spawn timer. Read the full interview to find out more!

I don't have a lot in the way of details to share at the moment regarding some of the more pressing issues expressed by the PvP community, but we're reading.

I'm currently planning to add a section to the 5.1 notes on class changes to the 5.1 Public Test Realm blog tomorrow morning. While the changes aren't complete, there's probably going to be some stuff in there that hasn't been picked up by fansites yet. There will also likely be more changes than the ones listed, for the record.

This thread again. Daxx should just sticky one of the dozen posts they addressed this in.
To be honest, I wasn't planning to address Rated Battleground issues in this thread. I was posting just to say "Hey, I read these forums."

Do appreciate you coming by Daxx, maybe you guys should do a Q&A sometime on the current issues of PvP balance yeah?
Maybe a blog? I think Ghostcrawler mentioned something to that effect via Twitter. We'll look into it!

I know most of your response will probably be vague in order to not fry your own bacon, we understand you guys have a lot on your plate, but a simple "Ya we recognize BM/Arms/Others are powerful, we'll have a fix ASAP."
It's easy to miss, but we've been making incremental hotfixes to both Warriors and Beast Mastery Hunters (as well as other classes, of course). There are likely more changes coming in 5.1 too. Some examples of stuff that's already been changed:

Fixed an issue that would prevent the stuns generated by Charge and Warbringer from causing diminishing returns with each other and with themselves.

Healing performed by Spirit Beasts summoned by the Stampede talent is now correctly reduced by 75%.

Rabid has been changed and now increases a pet's attack speed by 70%. Pet attack power is now unaffected by this ability.

rbg queue is a dumb idea and it will end up being the same as random bgs, so no

Blizzard's Stance on Ninja Looting
I think it's important to note that our support policies match what's reasonably enforceable, and this really can't be a conversation about our support team making the right or wrong decisions, or helping or not helping. It's unreasonable for them to act as arbiters for every piece of loot that drops in every dungeon for every player. I hope that's something we can all agree with.

What can and should be discussed, and something we've been discussing a bit more internally, is the loot rules themselves to potentially prevent the issue in the first place. Clearly the current dungeon loot rules are fairly lax to allow for people to gear up in different ways. We (at least currently) want people to be able to gear up to tank by DPSing, or being able to help out others by healing when they really just want to DPS in their weekly raid. We want to allow them to run dungeons over and over to make up for bad luck in their drops. Just with those two things combined there will be people in your groups rolling on items you believe to be better for you.

One side issue that's made this all seem much worse is that with the launch of Mists a lot of items were tagged incorrectly, leading to people being able to roll on items they just have no business being able to roll on regardless of specs available to them. That makes the system just seem broken, when it's only a couple items that are essentially 'bugged'. We of course want to get to those bugs as quickly as possible.

There are clear benefits to allowing people to roll on off-spec items, or run dungeons over and over to try to get an item (or even just because they enjoy dungeons!). There are also clear issues it can cause when the factor of who 'deserves an item more' comes into it. Being matched with strangers you can never truly know someone else's intentions, and conclusions are easy to jump to. The converse though, where you can only roll on your current spec, is a system where you're locked into gearing up a specific way, and discourages (or maybe completely blocks) changing roles or even gearing up an off-spec - even if no one else wants an item.

There are many considerations to be made, but the discussion of LFD vs LFR loot systems is a larger one than even just this issue, and the devs seem intent on discussing it more and more as this expansion rolls on.

Until then, if you want to ensure you get the drop you want, I really recommend forming a group with trusted friends and guild mates if at all possible. Plus you can talk trash on them the whole time, which makes everything with friends more fun! (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Loot Rolling System Feedback
In general, developers are always open to changes as long as they lead to better gameplay.

Having said that, I can tell you that there have been some recent discussions going on about the dungeon looting system.
So there’s at least a chance that they might re-evaluate its implementation and consider other options. As soon as we have more concrete information on the subject we’ll make sure to let everyone know. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Challenge Mode Cooldown ResetsIs there anyway we can have all timers reset each time a challenge is reset so we do not have to sit here waiting?
There is a way (see below).

This please, waiting 5+ minutes on just about any cd is hardly compelling gameplay.
We agree and intend to include a change with Patch 5.1 that will clear cooldowns of 5 minutes or more, upon resetting or completing a Challenge Mode dungeon.

Could it also clear the debuffs applied by Timewarp/Heroism/Lust?
Much like how the system works now for raid encounters, debuffs like those will also be cleared. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Flying While Dead in Pandaria
Since the vast majority of Pandaria's content was designed around the use of ground mounts, we didn't include flight for players who are in spirit form (dead). There are a few locations, similar to the WoW days of old, where you can die and be unable to retrieve your corpse. The reality is this shouldn't be an overwhelming inconvenience to players, unless you're very frequently dying in unfortunate ways, and in unfortunate locations. Sometimes going with the Spirit Healer might be the best (or only) way to revive yourself. But that's a big reason why they've been in the game since launch.

Why can we not fly when dead in Pandaria? It is rather annoying to die in a location, whether pvp or otherwise, and be unable to return to your body because it is a location only accessible via flight. Once you train flying, you should be able to fly when dead. Is this something that will be resolved in a future patch?

In "the WoW days of old" you were not likely to fly somewhere that you can't get your corpse from.
You're right. I just spoke to Ghostcrawler about it a bit and am going to clarify my original post. I explained why we didn't initially include flight while in ghost form on Pandaria, but it's important to note that the developers are discussing the issue and might well add ghost flying to the new continent. We do recognize that it's possible to die in some very inconvenient places, and much more frequently than in vanilla WoW due to flying mounts. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Daily Quests and Reputation
Regarding reputations and items, keep in mind that the gear there is not mandatory for progression into raiding (in fact, items from normal Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring, which will be available very soon, are higher item level than these: 496).

All the other items are things you can get over time and the developers feel that earning good standing with a faction should involve something more than an insignificant time investment. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

WorldWhy cant me and my pals do current tier cross realm raids? when we can do rbg's?
We are concerned about what happens to guilds if everything can be done cross realm.

Is it intended that we can now no longer fly while in ghost form, and we run terribly slow? Really hurts QoL in the game.
Slow is on purpose but we agree not being able to fly can be a problem in some areas. It really is something that doesn't make any sense at all if you have access to flying mounts, I've seen pandaria.
Likely tied to wanting a more traditional quest experience. Not sure the tech exists to allow it by lvl rather than zone yet. But we create new tech to solve these types of issues virtually every patch. It's nothing short of silly not to allow ghost flying. At every turn you peeps seem to default to most difficult. Not fun.
I'd say we err on the side of caution. It's better to release things w/ conservative rules & loosen over time than the reverse.Why not put a res timer on world boss deaths instead of making ghosts have to run in MoP? 5 minutes should work.
Movement speed while dead wasn't related to world bosses. We expect Sha especially to be zerged. That's fine. What is the reason than? If it's not a terrible secret.
Sha of Anger is more about the excitement of attacking a boss that large, not a coordinated raid strategy. Think Archavon. We nerfed movement speed while dead because it didn't feel like dying was actually a setback (in any content). Spending more time running back as a ghost makes dying more of a setback? What?
Dying only has two costs: time and money. The latter isn't even much of a penalty.

About the only complaint i could offer would be a ton of quests that don't share group object loot in Dread Wastes
Quest drops not having multi-loot in DW are mostly bugs, we're fixing them as we find 'em. Sorry! Glad you're digging the xpack!

Any plans to do anything about golden lotus? ATM it's nearly impossible to supply a raid team w/ flasks.
Yeah Golden Lotus (the herb) is too rare.

Why can't we fly back to our bodies while dead anymore?
It's just not something we put in Pandaria since very little flying is necessary to quest.

"It's nothing short of silly not to allow ghost flying. At every turn you peeps seem to default to most difficult. Not fun"

~long drawn out sigh~ what state of mind do these whiny complaints come from. Holy crap they already toned down so much. You can't fly while in ghost form..ok AND... I get that back in vanilla people were not flying places and dying, but come on these kinds of whiny complaints seem too common.

Comments like "This please, waiting 5+ minutes on just about any cd is hardly compelling gameplay."

it is almost like these dudes have learned to use BLizzards lingo to increase whine efficiancy by 250%

I wonder if the Horseman boss will once again be a challenge at level 90 like Coren was compared to the facerollness that was in previous years. Makes for people to actually earn their rewards for once.